“Every bad decision I’ve made, I’ve made when I’d been drinking. Waking up with a hangover, wasting a day, the bulls**t you talk”: How Ricky Warwick got sober and reconnected with his Northern Irish roots on new album Blood Ties

Ricky Warwick posing for a photograph on rocks.

You can take the boy out of Northern Ireland, but you can’t take Northern Ireland out of the boy. After 20 years of living in the US – and before that Scotland, Bradford and London – Ricky Warwick has returned to the country of his birth. “I’ve still got a house in LA, but we’ve got this place here in Belfast too,” he says, speaking via Zoom from the latter. “There’s always been a pull for me. I always knew I’d end up back here.” The notion of family and roots are woven into the Black Star Riders and The Almighty frontman’s new solo album, Blood Ties.